


Citizens of Death's Grey Land

by crapoftheworld



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: :), Alternate Universe - Military, Alternate Universe - Spies & Secret Agents, Assassin Keith (Voltron), BAMF Keith (Voltron), BAMF Lance (Voltron), Blood and Injury, Bombs, Commander Allura, Commander Coran, Engineer Hunk (Voltron), Espionage, Explosives, GUYS, Gen, Gender-Neutral Pronouns for Pidge | Katie Holt, Hacker Pidge | Katie Holt, Healing pods, If you want - Freeform, Injured Lance (Voltron), Keith and his knives, Keith/Lance (Voltron) Angst, Keith/Lance (Voltron)-centric, Lance (Voltron) Angst, Lance is a raven, Medical Inaccuracies, Mildly Graphic Violence, Murder, Non-Graphic Violence, POV Keith (Voltron), Politics, Pre-Slash, Protective Voltron Paladins, Soldier Lance (Voltron), Soldier Shiro (Voltron), Spies & Secret Agents, Undercover, Undercover Missions, Veteran Lance, Violence, War, actually all of the paladins are bamf lords, blade of marmora, broganes, but this story is, google sexpionage its actually really badass, honey pot, its an element of the story i guess, kind of, lance has a super secret backstory, like the KGB thing, miraculous and highly improbable recoveries, no beta we die like men, seriously, several people are brutally murdered oops, technically, there, well its kind of graphic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-08
Updated: 2020-05-08
Packaged: 2021-03-02 17:13:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,708
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24080386
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crapoftheworld/pseuds/crapoftheworld
Summary: When Keith pulled open the door of the van and slid into the passenger seat half an hour of casual power walking later, he was met with the sight of Pidge switching between several different screens, looking mildly distressed.Before Keith could ask, they spoke on the com.“Uh, Pink, slight problem,” they squeaked, still frantically searching for something on the monitor.“Green? Report,” Allura responded, voice stoic and void of any discernible emotion.“It’s Blue. He’s gone dark.”***Keith is a member an elite task force with one goal: bring down the Galra Empire. In the middle of their most daring operation yet, one that could bring them closer to finally ending the war, they lose contact with a team member and are forced to improvise.
Relationships: Keith & Lance (Voltron)
Comments: 12
Kudos: 202
Collections: Voltron Stars🌌





	Citizens of Death's Grey Land

**Author's Note:**

> Ay carumba, a one-shot! I had a lot of fun trying to incorporate random VLD things into this AU.
> 
> The title is a quote from Siegfried Sassoon's poem, [_Dreamers_](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43169/dreamers).

“I need a visual on Blue, _now!_ ” Allura’s voice crackled over Keith’s com, and he could tell that behind her commanding tone, she was panicking. He couldn’t blame her, though. He was pretty sure they were all experiencing varying degrees of panic right now.

“I know, I know,” Pidge replied as their fingers flew frantically over their keyboard. Keith was getting antsy waiting in the van, his hands travelling down to his belt and fiddling with one of the many knives hidden on his person. None of this was going according to plan.

It was supposed to be a simple mission, extracting an informant and eliminating some key Galra operatives. It was by no means an _easy_ mission, but it was the kind of thing the infamous Team Voltron had pulled off without a hitch many times over the years.

In fact, their long and immaculate resume brimming with successful missions was one of the reasons they were so well known both underground and above ground. Why good guys and bad guys alike trembled at the mere mention of the name Voltron.

“I’ve got him!” Pidge called out not even a minute later, and Keith leaned over from the van’s passenger seat to get a look at the video feed Pidge was pulling up on their screen. “Patching it through to you now.”

If Keith squinted, he could barely make out the deceptively lanky silhouette of one Lance McClain hesitating at the mouth of an alley in the grainy security feed. Deceptive because Lance was _jacked_ , which Keith was well aware of considering a large chunk of his free time was spent training with the man, who had a very annoying habit of stripping his shirt off mid-spar.

“Gold, is the drone up and running?” Allura questioned, and Keith noted that now that she had a location and visual on Blue, she seemed a bit more put together.

This wasn’t the first mission where things had gone… not according to plan, but it was by far the most high stakes operation they’d ever messed up on. And boy had they royally fucked this one up.

There was a beat of silence, before Hunk’s com suddenly started transmitting a horrible screeching noise that cut off just as quickly as it began. A moment later, Hunk was speaking breathlessly into his mic.

“Rover is a go, Pink.”

“Okay then, Black and Gold may proceed to Phase 3 of the plan. Green, keep me updated on Blue,” Allura’s voice, clipped and authoritative, left no room for arguments. All three operatives chorused their affirmatives before the channel went quiet again.

As Keith looked on, Pidge was pulling up more video feeds, tracking Blue as he zigzagged through the streets he knew like the back of his hand. They’d never pulled a job in Daibazaal before, considering it was about as deep in hostile territory as you could get, but Lance had spent most of his prep time meticulously studying the maps.

Keith’s role in this job was already complete, hence his sitting uselessly in the van while Pidge played peeping Tom on Lance.

At mission start at 24:00 Castle Time, Keith and Shiro had infiltrated the high security parking garage located below the tallest skyscraper in the entire hemisphere. The crown jewel of the Galra Empire where Zarkon conducted most of his business from -- _The Rift._

It was theoretically impenetrable, but that’s where Team Voltron came in. They’d been planning this op for the better part of a year using information from several informants they’d managed to plant deep within Zarkon’s network.

Several months ago, Keith had also been one of those undercover agents, part of an Altean detachment code-named the Blade of Marmora. He’d been working a lowball security job, trying to claw his way into a higher ranking position, but Kolivan, Allura, and Coran had apparently collectively decided the water was too hot and pulled him out before his cover could be blown.

At the time, there had been a Galra rat within Altea’s ranks and the Blade was nearly eradicated in its entirety.

Keith was more suited to missions like this one, though, so he didn’t mind. He’d never been the best actor. Plus, who wouldn’t appreciate the thrill of working alongside the most skilled and decorated operatives to have emerged in the last decade?

So, thanks to accurate information on guard shifts, blind spots, and security codes, the ample cover the dark of night provided them with, and with Pidge’s supervision, he and Shiro successfully entered the Rift’s parking garage undetected, lugging their duffle bags packed with several explosives each.

The explosives, designed by Hunk, were extremely effective within a small radius, making them ideal for use in situations where they wanted a lot of firepower but didn’t want to level an entire city block. Phase 1 was the easiest part of the plan.

They’d practiced this in the simulator so many times that they could rig the entire lot in well under their twenty-minute time limit. Keith had his route burned into his brain, muscle memory aiding him in finding the correct support beams to attach his ten explosives to.

The positioning was important, seeing as they were trying to destabilize the building, not bring it down. It would only take the slight misplacement of one bomb to bring the entire Rift down along with all of the undercover Blade members within.

When he’d secured all of his bombs and confirmed that they were armed and connected to Pidge’s network, he met up with Shiro at their exit point on the other end of the lot.

“Took you long enough, Red,” Shiro said, keeping his voice low but not managing to hide his grin at Keith’s huffing from sprinting across the parking lot.

“Shut it, old man. You had fewer explosives to plant,” Keith grumbled, flipping Shiro the bird.

Before Shiro could retort with anything, they were interrupted by the lilting voice of Blue.

“Enough with the sibling banter,” Blue drawled, almost sounding bored. Knowing Lance, he probably _was_ bored, waiting impatiently for Phase 2. “Give me the go ahead before Green bites my head off.”

“It’s all good on our end, Blue,” Shiro said, splitting off from Keith with a cheeky salute.

Even as Shiro slipped away like a shadow, hoisting himself up the fire escape on a shorter building adjacent to the Rift on his way to meet Hunk and start prep for Phase 3, Keith knew he, along with their fellow operatives, would be able to hear what Keith said next thanks to the coms each member of Team Voltron has wedged deep in their eardrum.

“Pink, permission to proceed with Phase 2?”

Allura had responded immediately with the affirmative, which meant it was time for Keith to hightail it to his next checkpoint. It also meant that Blue, their resident seduction specialist, as he liked to refer to himself, was finally coming out to play.

The reason this mission was so high stakes, besides the fact that they’d spent a little under a year planning it, was that this was their only chance to devastatingly cripple the Galra Empire in a single sweeping operation.

It was the one day in nearly one hundred years of the Galra Empire’s cruel reign that all of the important leaders were meeting in the same location for some kind of secret meeting called the Kral Zera. It made sense that that location would be the Rift, both for symbolic reasons and the added bonus of top-of-the-line security.

In fact, the informant who had gotten them the information, a man named Lotor with familial ties to Zarkon according to the mission briefing Keith had sat through, was part of this op. He’d gotten antsy and demanded an extraction, which was Phase 2.

Keith ducked his head as he wandered inconspicuously down the road, avoiding street lamps. He needed to change out of his casual civilian clothes and into his uniform for this next part.

His stealth suit was stashed a couple of blocks away from the Rift, and as he turned into the alley, he wasn’t surprised to see Blue waiting for him, leaning against the wall and inspecting his nails. He looked up with a sharp grin at Keith’s arrival, cocking one perfectly shaped eyebrow.

After working with Lance for several years, Keith had learned to get used to his antics and had absolutely zero shame about stripping right in front of Lance.

Like clockwork, Blue wolf whistled and refused to look away to give Keith privacy like a normal person. He just leered at him until he’d finished wriggling into his standard skintight black suit. Keith tucked his knives into his custom designed pockets before finally meeting Lance’s gaze unflinchingly.

Keith just smirked when Lance’s twinkling blue eyes quickly darted to the left, Lance easily giving up on the staring contest as his cheeks flushed in the dim alley. He talked a big game, but as soon as Keith bit back he didn’t stand much of a chance.

Keith took the moment to admire Lance’s choice of outfit. He’d had free reign with his wardrobe for the op, and he’d gone with a tailored two piece suit. His white silk shirt was unbuttoned at the top and he wasn’t wearing a tie, revealing a smooth, sun kissed chest. The navy blue jacket and pants hugged his lithe frame just right, and he’d gone with some nondescript casual dress shoes, the kind with rubber soles in case Lance needed to make a clean getaway.

“Looks like I’m up,” Lance said cheerily, having managed to harness his typical cocky demeanor once again as he pushed off of the filthy wall he’d been leaning against. “Wish me luck, Red,” he purred as he practically skipped back into the street, turning back in the direction of the Rift.

After waiting five minutes, Keith also exited the alley, tailing Lance all the way back to the Galra building. Phase 2 was pretty standard, the only difference from mission to mission being the targets. Keith had done honey pot missions with Lance so many times now that he’d lost count.

When Keith arrived at the Rift, he walked in through the front doors. He trusted Pidge to scramble facial recognition and wipe the security feeds for him after. They’d timed this so that the security guards would be in the middle of a shift change. Blue would only have to handle whoever was in the lobby.

And Lance sure was handling it, alright. He was already working the room, laying it on thick with the five secretaries that had previously been manning the front desks.

Keith knew that Zarkon only employed experienced combatants, no matter what was in the job description, thanks to the stack of files Allura had given him, which made Keith a little wary about leaving Lance alone in a room with them.

Even as he hesitated, the group had started laughing boisterously at something Lance had said, and Keith knew he had his claws in deep. Lance just grinned lazily, expertly using body language and facial cues to maintain the attention of the three women and two men.

No matter how many times they did this, Keith was always blown away by how good Lance was at manipulating his own body, using it to get whatever he wanted from someone. Keith couldn’t help but wonder how well any of the team really knew Blue.

He still remembered the operation that went down almost two years ago now.

It was supposed to be an easy mission, just busting a high profile scientist, Slav, out of Beta Traz, but as soon as Shiro, Keith, and Lance had stepped onto the remote prison facility, they’d been doomed. A turncoat had given the Warden a heads up, and within minutes of securing their target, Team Voltron ended up surrounded by Galra operatives.

As it turned out, they were saved when the gun that had been knocked from Shiro’s grip by a Galra agent skidded across the room to land at Lance’s feet, who had been busily typing away at a keyboard as per Pidge’s instructions.

Keith still remembered being held down, his own knife at his throat, yelling for Shiro, when seven gunshots rang out in quick succession. The room seemed like it was frozen in time, but then the bodies of seven Galra agents slumped to the ground, each with a clean bullet hole in the dead center of their foreheads.

And Keith had turned to see Lance holding the smoking gun.

Where he had expected to see a confident grin or a sneer directed at him, he saw Lance’s lips twisting in an ugly grimace.

Without a word, Lance passed the gun back to Shiro, dragging Slav out of the room and leaving the two stunned brothers behind.

Allura had done Lance the favor of giving him a private debriefing, and the incident had never been spoken of again. Despite the lack of acknowledgement from Lance, Keith started noticing more signs after Beta Traz.

The trembling in Lance's right hand when he got nervous, the way his eyes always darted around immediately whenever he entered a new room, the pages upon pages of redacted information in Lance’s public file, the numerous scars revealed whenever Lance peeled off his shirt that told a story of violence and death.

For some reason, Lance didn’t want the team to know, and he did an excellent job of misdirecting them with his outrageous flirting and annoying personality. But Keith had finally put the pieces together.

Lance was a veteran.

And even if in all of their years of working together, Lance had never talked to Keith about his past, it still made him feel that much better in situations like these. Keith made eye contact with Lance as he passed the small group unnoticed before rounding the corner and approaching the stairwell.

He climbed up several sets of stairs, not encountering anybody, until he finally arrived at the twenty-fourth floor, where Lotor had informed them he would be.

Keith stalked through the quiet building, the hallways empty and silent at this time of night. The only signs of life in the entire building besides the secretaries in the lobby were the Galra commanders meeting in the penthouse, probably discussing murder and crime, along with a couple thousand Galra droids being stored in the upper levels.

Keith halted abruptly in the hall, Pidge’s voice coming through his com just as he was about to turn a corner.

“Red, there’s three guards on the target. Pink has confirmed that you are clear to engage.”

Keith’s right hand crept to his favorite dagger, a metallic purple knife gifted to him by his late mother, while his left hand wrapped around three throwing knives. He breathed deeply, giving himself a silent countdown, before he rounded the corner on the three unsuspecting guards.

The fight was over quickly. None of Keith’s opponents had a chance to draw a weapon, much less raise the alarm.

The first to go down was the man standing furthest from Keith, three small knives having embedded themselves in his chest. Before that body hit the floor, Keith was already slitting the throat of the guard standing closest to him, then lunging for the woman who had started tapping something into the keypad on the door they had been doing a very poor job of guarding. He grabbed another knife from his ankle, and with one knife in each hand, finished the job by jamming a blade through each of her ears.

A little gory, sure, but effective nonetheless.

Keith stepped over the bodies, collecting his knives as he went and wiping the blood on his victims’ clothes.

He entered the room and found a tall man wearing a smart looking suit. Alarmingly, he was gripping a gun tightly in his trembling hands. A gun pointed right at Keith. He scrambled to say the previously agreed upon code word before he walked fully into the room, hoping to avoid getting his brains blown out by the twitchy guy with a gorgeous mane of white hair.

“Oriande,” he called out, and the man visibly deflated, tossing the gun aside.

“Oh, thank God,” he crowed as he took a shaky step forward, holding out a clammy hand to shake. Keith rolled his eyes at the man who had only uttered three words and already managed to get on his nerves more than Lance ever had, even at the beginning of their time as colleagues.

Keith turned his back on the man and led him out of the room, having to drag him back down the hallway when he froze at the sight of the three bodies that Keith had left in his wake, but they eventually made it to the stairwell. He wondered how this nut job had the balls to rat out Zarkon.

They eventually emerged back on the ground floor, and Keith found that the lobby was curiously empty. It wasn’t the first time that Lance had gone a bit overboard on the seduction, but five people was basically an orgy and even for Lance that seemed like a bit much.

The guards were back on duty at the front doors, but Keith could just follow Lotor out and be mistaken as a Galra lackey. One perk of extracting a very high ranking member of the Galra Empire, he supposed.

They cleared the building easily enough, and then Keith led Lotor a few blocks away to the harbor, where Coran was waiting on a small motorboat to get Lotor back across the border and into Altea.

While Coran took care of Lotor, Keith had to get back to Pidge, who was back towards the center of Daibazaal, parked on the street in a nondescript van. He would be their backup for Phase 3.

When Keith pulled open the door of the van and slid into the passenger seat half an hour of casual power walking later, he was met with the sight of Pidge switching between several different screens, looking mildly distressed.

Before Keith could ask, they spoke on the com.

“Uh, Pink, slight problem,” they squeaked, still frantically searching for something on the monitor.

“Green? Report,” Allura responded, voice stoic and void of any discernible emotion.

“It’s Blue. He’s gone dark.”

And that’s how Keith got to where he was right now, waiting impatiently in the van for Lance to lose whoever was tailing him and get back to the van in one piece.

Keith had half a mind to abandon Pidge and rescue his infuriating colleague himself, but Keith had learned the hard way over the years that if he strayed from the plan even a little bit, he could jeopardize the entire mission.

Obviously, the fact that Blue had lost his com was somewhat alarming. Pidge had already scrambled the signal going to Lance’s com in case the Galra had managed to get their hands on it.

Meanwhile, Blue was tearing through Daibazaal’s maze of alleyways like a madman. Pidge kept switching camera views, and Keith eventually counted five people in hot pursuit of the wayward member of Team Voltron.

Keith had no doubt those five people were the secretaries from the lobby at the Rift. He wondered how Lance had blown his cover. Keith couldn’t remember the last time that had happened, but it must have been over five years ago now.

As Lance ran past a high-tech storefront, Pidge managed to pull up the video feed from a higher quality camera and he could finally see the expression on Lance’s face.

He had his serious look on, no traces of the playful smirk he usually wore. His eyes were narrowed, and Keith could see he was favoring his left leg. Now that he could look closer, Keith was certain that there was a darker patch on the front of Lance’s navy pants, possibly a bullet hole in his right thigh.

Keith cursed Lance for his adamantly enforced policy of never arming himself on missions. He knew for a fact that if Lance just sucked it up and brought a simple pistol, the five Galra agents wouldn’t have been a problem at all.

“Rover has delivered all of the packages,” Hunk’s voice boomed over the coms.

Even though Lance had gone rogue, they were still going ahead with Phase 3, which meant they were planting even more explosives in all of the important members of the Galra’s vehicles. The goal was to have minimum casualties, so Phase 4 was the detonation of the bombs that Keith and Shiro had planted hours ago in the lot below the Rift.

The Galra would freak out, either expecting Altean snipers to finish the job or for the entire building to actually collapse. Team Voltron, or more accurately Coran, had suggested this plan because the Galra would assume they would conduct this operation the same way they usually did stings.

However, with the added factor of several undercover Blades in the building, they had to think of a way to get around blowing up the entirety of the Rift. Thus, Coran’s brilliant plan to spook the Galra into fleeing to their getaway vehicles, before the final phase of the operation: elimination of the targets via the bombs that Hunk and Shiro had planted using their advanced stealth drone, Rover.

Keith had thought the plan was brilliant at the time, but now with Lance running around the city on his own, things weren’t looking so good.

Lance was compromised, and technically that meant they were supposed to leave him behind if he couldn’t get back to the van by 03:00 CT when they were officially packing this operation up and heading back to Altea.

“Well done. Gold and Black return to base immediately. Green,” Allura only hesitated for a moment before finishing decisively. “Phase 4 is a go.”

Keith grabbed at Pidge’s laptop while they started inputting commands in a separate device they had had in their pocket. He wanted to keep an eye on Lance, who was currently hopping a fence as he made his way further into town. Keith knew that Lance had a plan (because he always did), but he couldn’t figure out where Lance was heading for the life of him.

“Detonation in 3,” Pidge stated, thumbs still tap-tap-tapping on the screen that was casting a blue glow on their face. Their glasses flashed as they looked up to make eye contact with Keith.

“2.”

Keith couldn’t tear his eyes away from Lance. He was far away enough from the Rift to not be directly affected by the explosion, a couple of blocks across town. He looked like he was making his way towards the city-owned impound lot.

“1.”

He felt the shock-wave before he heard the actual detonation, but then he was reflexively covering his ears at the deafening _boom_ that interrupted the quiet of the night. Pidge glanced over at Keith briefly before sighing and pulling out a different laptop, apparently having elected to allow Keith to keep tabs on Lance.

Keith spared a quick glance at Pidge’s monitor, on which they were now tracking the movements of Galra commanders who were predictably abandoning ship. Like roaches fleeing a poisoned nest.

It turned out Keith had been right about Lance’s destination. He was now limping through the impound lot, peeking through the windows of every car he passed. It looked like he was going with one of his alternate escape methods, planning to rendezvous back at the Castle in Altea rather than leading the Galra agents back to the van.

Which Keith found endearing, but also stupid because he and Pidge could’ve easily taken care of the grunts.

Lance finally found a car that he deemed worthy of being his escape vehicle, a sleek black sedan that wouldn’t draw too much attention. Keith was proud of him for passing up the electric blue buggy a few rows back.

As Keith watched, Lance pulled a slim jim out of his sleeve and jammed it in the window. The Galra agents had split up in the lot, having lost sight of Lance when he turned a corner. The lock popped, and Lance hopped into the car, hunching over while he presumably hotwired it. Pidge was still watching their own screen, but then they glanced over at Keith’s and did a double take.

“What’s the license plate on Lance’s vehicle?”

Keith leaning in really close, trying to make out the fuzzy symbols on the really low-grade camera feed.

“ZRKN-4-LYF.”

Pidge stared at him for a moment, as if in disbelief.

“That’s Commander Prorok’s transport.”

Now it was Keith’s turn to let his jaw drop.

“ _What?_ ” he practically shouted, switching laptops with Pidge and looking at their monitor.

Sure enough, a purple dot was hastily making its way to the impound lot, where Lance was furiously trying to hotwire the sedan. He’d never been the best at wires. That was Hunk’s specialty.

Keith felt his throat tighten up, and then he was shoving the computer back at Pidge and clambering back out of the van. The sky was beginning to brighten a bit, and Keith checked the time. 02:34 CT.

Pidge was calling after him as he opened up the trunk, grabbing a couple of pistols and shoving them in his pockets. As soon as he saved Lance, he was going to kill the dumbass.

It made sense that Lance hadn’t bothered to memorize the license plates and transport types of all of the Galra members attending the Kral Zera, seeing as he wasn’t supposed to be involved in Phase 3 or 5 at all, but it was still an idiot move. _They were supposed to be the best task force on the entire planet for fuck’s sake!_

“We have a situation,” Pidge was informing the team as Keith started hoofing it to the impound lot, forgoing stealth in favor of speed. “Blue’s in one of the target vehicles and Red has left to assist him.”

The coms crackled with various sounds of alarm at the news, but Shiro’s voice was the loudest.

“What do you mean, he’s in a target vehicle?”

“We mean, he’s in Commander Prorok’s car,” Keith growled as he vaulted over the same chain link fence he’d seen Lance scale on camera only ten minutes ago.

“But the explosives for Phase 5 are timed detonations!” Hunk practically yelled, and Keith imagined that the big man’s face was probably turning green right about now.

“I know, the bombs are on a closed circuit, I can’t get into them,” Pidge was saying as Keith finally arrived at the impound lot. He could at least be grateful for Lance’s incompetence when it came to hotwiring cars. Even Hunk, who was the best at it, took a minimum of twenty minutes to get a car going. Older models had been phased out, and now it was rare to encounter any of the old rust buckets that could be commandeered in mere seconds.

“Red, what’s your status?” Allura asked, voice strained. “Black is en route to provide backup.”

Keith was surprised by that last bit of information. Shiro had already been in the clear, and now he was coming back into the field? It seemed out of character for Allura to allow such a thing. She was now risking losing three operatives on a single mission.

“I have eyes on Blue and a Galra agent. Permission to engage?”

“Permission granted,” Allura answered curtly, and after a moment she added, “Bring him back alive, Red.”

“Roger.”

Keith went quiet, pulling out one of his knives as he stalked the Galra agent currently walking away from him towards the car that Lance was tinkering around in, her back left unprotected.

When Keith made his move, the woman, who had a similar build to Lance’s, dodged out of the way. Apparently she’d heard his approach.

Keith assumed a fighting stance, and was about to make another lunge when the woman drew a fucking _whip_ , which she cracked at his hand, forcing him to relinquish his hold on the knife he’d drawn.

It turned out that his opponent was also well versed in acrobatics as she started dancing around him, bending out of the way of his strikes instead of blocking them directly. He was wasting time, and Lance was still so consumed with his task that he hadn’t noticed the fight outside, so Keith made a split-second decision and drew one of the guns he had been intending to give to Lance.

Keith tended to avoid guns because they were horribly loud (silencers were banned in Altea after the assassination of King Alfor), and because it was a well-known fact amongst the members of Team Voltron that Keith was a pretty shitty shot.

So maybe he shouldn’t have been surprised when the woman cracked her whip again, easily knocking his hand to the left just as he was pulling the trigger. A loud _pop_ came from the gun as the hammer snapped, propelling the bullet out of the chamber.

Keith _was_ surprised when he saw where his bullet had ended up. It was buried in the front engine of the black sudan that Lance was in.

“Oh, _fu_ -”

Keith’s vision whited out as he dove for cover behind a pickup truck. The shock-wave knocked him on his ass, and he could tell that there was definitely a scrap of metal embedded in his arm. He knew that his team was probably trying to contact him, but he couldn’t hear anything beyond the ringing in his ears.

He got to his feet, staggering forward as he clutched his arm and glancing around at the destruction the bomb had wrought. The woman Keith had been fighting was lying on her back, blood dripping out of her mouth and a shard of metal sticking out of her chest. Dead.

He turned towards the smoking crater that was where the black sedan had been mere seconds ago. He let out a sort of wounded sound (which he would vehemently deny later), rushing forward into the smoking debris, choking on the fumes.

“Lance! _Fuck_ , Blue, where are you?” he shouted, desperately clawing through the rubble. Keith recognized the frantic voices of his team starting to filter in through his com.

“Red, I need you to report. Are you alright?”

Keith was struggling to form a reply, but before he could answer, more explosions went off all over the city. That meant it was 03:00 CT and Phase 5 was officially underway. The new round of detonations was jarring, causing him to trip forward face first into a pile of melting car parts.

Keith struggled to stand, and as he did so he heard a faint groan coming from below him.

“Fuck, Pink, I’ve got him, just give me a second!”

Keith ripped his com out as he dug through the rubble like his life depended on it. It was still hot from the bomb, but he ignored the pain of his burned hands and kept shoving car parts aside.

After what seemed like a lifetime of digging, he finally unearthed a tan hand. Keith was definitely going to leave the crying out of his mission report later.

He moved one last sheet of metal to reveal Lance in all of his glory.

He’d taken his jacket off while he was trying to hotwire the car, and his white shirt was shredded, practically in tatters. There were several pieces of glass sticking out of his chest and legs. His right ankle had been crushed by a chunk of red-hot metal.

“Never thought I’d get blown up again,” Lance mumbled up at him, and Keith’s stomach dropped. Lance was in really bad shape if he was dropping random hints about his past in front of _Keith,_ of all people.

He started gently pressing his fingers around the base of Lance’s skull, making sure that Lance’s spine and neck were intact so he could pick the man up.

“Aren’t you spos’d to take me to dinner before you start feelin’ me up, Mullet?” Lance slurred, grinning lopsidedly up at Keith as he lifted the man, cradling him to his chest.

“Yeah, I’ll take you to dinner if you stay awake with me, okay? We can go to that place you like, Balmera Cafe, alright? Just keep talking,” Keith tried desperately, feeling his cheeks dampen with more tears as he started walking back out of the impound lot.

“Why’re you cryin’, man? Did I do somethin’ wrong again?” Lance coughed wetly, and Keith swore when he saw the blood pooling in his mouth.

“Yeah, Lance. But you’re going to be okay, we’ll be fine,” Keith whispered as he shoved his com back in his ear.

“-took care of Prorok,” Shiro was in the middle of saying. “The other four Galra agents either got away or are buried, but I can’t find Blue or Red.”

“I’ve got Blue,” Keith cut in, his voice cracking horribly. “We’re on the street, we need an immediate extraction.”

“Hang tight, Red. Green is on their way with the van, that’s your ticket out of there,” Allura responded. Keith assumed that Allura and Hunk had already cleared out now that Phase 5 was complete. He wasn’t really surprised that Pidge had chosen to stick around. This wouldn’t be the first time they saved his sorry ass.

Just as Shiro jogged up to him, looking a bit worse for wear with a deep cut running over his nose, Pidge came skidding around the corner and pulled the van to a screeching halt.

“Alright, who needs medical first?” Pidge said as they vacated the driver’s seat.

They looked at the group of operatives for a moment, assessing the situation, before taking charge.

“Shiro, drive. Keith, get Lance onto the stretcher in the back.”

The drive back to the Altean-Galra border was nerve-wracking. The van was never meant to be an escape vehicle. They’d purchased it to use on this mission and had planned to leave it behind in Daibazaal.

However, probably due to the fact that they’d just assassinated nearly every Galra commander and general, they didn’t end up experiencing much resistance at the border. They followed protocol and went dark on communications, so they were on their own until they could get back to the Castle.

Pidge had spent most of the drive flitting around between Keith, Shiro, and Lance, removing shards of glass and metal, cleaning wounds, and bandaging them up. Lance had spent the majority of the drive passed out, mumbling gibberish.

Pidge had determined that he would definitely need a pod. The technology was experimental right now, but it was Lance’s only hope. Though he’d somehow survived the initial explosion (Pidge guessed that he had heard the gunshot and tried to dive for cover), he had several ruptured arteries in his leg, multiple broken bones and shallow stab wounds, the bullet in his leg, a pierced lung, and internal bleeding from an unknown source. It didn’t look good.

At 08:18 CT, the four members of Team Voltron finally arrived back at the Castle, their private barracks located on the outskirts of Arus. Coran, Allura, and Hunk were already waiting at the entrance for them, and as soon as Shiro parked the van, they were swarmed by the rest of their team.

Pidge was all business, immediately wheeling a still unconscious Lance out of the back of the van.

“Coran, get a pod set up.”

Hunk got one look at Lance and nearly barfed. Lance’s skin was pale and sickly by now, probably from an infection setting in that Pidge had tried their best to prevent.

While Coran ran ahead, Allura ushered Keith and Shiro to the medical wing to give them proper attention. Keith felt like he was floating the whole time. He’d stopped processing what was happening, his mind stuck on the image of Lance, bloody and _dying._

As soon as Allura deemed him fit enough to leave the medical wing, maybe a couple of hours later, he made a beeline for the lab where the pods were located, Shiro and Allura hot on his tail.

He found Coran fiddling with the small display screen on the side of the pod while Pidge was inputting commands furiously in their laptop. Hunk was bustling around, rearranging wires on the back of the healing device.

“Is it working?” Keith questioned, and the three people paused what they were doing to look up at him. Pidge pushed their glasses back up on their nose, nodding their head slightly as they replied.

“Lance is stable, for now. There’s no telling how long he’ll need to stay in there, though. And we’ll need to be constantly vigilant to make sure nothing goes wrong.”

The first week, Hunk, Pidge, and Coran had tweaked the pod constantly, upgrading it, rearranging physical components, and streamlining the code. Eventually, the trio of geniuses were satisfied by their work and left the pod alone to do its work.

Keith had spent every day in front of the pod, watching Lance’s serene face for any signs of distress. Shiro managed to get him to exercise with him twice a day, and Allura had allowed him to do a mission report on paper rather than the usual meeting while he waited in front of Lance’s pod.

Exactly 16 days, 12 hours, and 46 minutes after Lance had entered the pod, he was out again. The entire team had been waiting, Coran anticipating that Lance would be discharged around this time.

The clear barrier on the front of the pod slid down, and Lance stumbled out. Before he could face plant, Shiro caught him, holding him at arms length until Lance’s hazy eyes began to clear.

“Hey guys, what’d I miss?”

“ _Lance!_ You’re not dead!” Hunk cheered as he grabbed Lance, giving him a crushing hug.

“Well, that’s a relief,” Lance chuckled as the rest of the team joined Hunk in embracing Lance. “Must’ve been a close one, huh?”

“ _A close one?_ You got yourself blown up because you skimmed the mission file!”

Lance hummed, choosing to ignore Allura. Keith knew she would chew him out later during Lance’s debrief.

“Sure, but how did the mission go? Is the Galra Empire no more?”

Keith rolled his eyes. Of course Lance could immediately go from a near-death experience to joking around about a thousand year old war.

“Lotor has entered the Altean Witness Protection program. We’ve confirmed that all of our targets were eliminated except for Haggar,” Allura announced. “Zarkon is dead.”

Lance’s shoulders sagged in relief. He probably thought he had messed up the whole mission. Team Voltron would only need to complete a few more operations after this, and then they would finally be recognized publicly in Altea for their contributions to the war effort. After a decade of fighting, the war was finally coming to an end.

“Sounds like a celebration is in order,” Lance said as he tried to walk on his recently shattered ankle, using Hunk and Shiro as support. He made eye contact with Keith and winked.

“I’m on board, but you can’t drink any alcohol. I haven’t had enough time to analyze the effects of the pod’s accelerated healing process on your endocrine system,” Pidge called after him.

Keith didn’t try to stop the laugh he felt bubbling up from his chest at the dramatic groan that Lance let out.

Someday, they were going to make a stupid mistake and someone was going to die. They couldn’t keep surviving thanks to pure luck over and over again, especially in such a dangerous line of work.

But as Keith made to follow the rest of Team Voltron back to the rec room for a night of games and drinking, he decided that he could enjoy what they had while it lasted. He resolved to do his damnedest to make sure that a certain blue-eyed agent didn’t get himself killed before they could all happily retire.

And until then, Keith could certainly enjoy the sound of Lance bitching about Keith cheating on Mario Kart.

**Author's Note:**

> This thing kind of just happened. I used a prompt from [this list](https://www.bryndonovan.com/2018/10/11/50-fight-scene-writing-prompts-and-ideas/):
> 
> 44\. He steals his opponent’s car, not realizing his allies rigged it with an explosive.
> 
> I have a [Tumblr](https://crapoftheworldblr.tumblr.com) now! Go and leave an ask if you want <3


End file.
